From the Deep of the Dark Read Online Free

the officers of the Middlesteel constabulary.’
    ‘That it is as maybe,’ said the inspector, ‘but a report has been made, and our inquiries must follow. Now then, be so good as to fetch Lord Chant.’
    ‘If it is her ladyship’s health you wish to inquire after, I shall not be troubling his lordship. I shall summon her ladyship, to quicken the removal of your presence and the disturbance you’re creating this evening.’
    Her ladyship? He’s in for a shock, then.
    Dick Tull angled his neck for a better view of the richly appointed hallway beyond the constables’ peaked pillbox-style caps. So much sodding money. How much wealth had been spent in furnishing the vast space? Alabaster-white figureheads on columns engraved with victory scenes, the ancestors of Lord Chant, their humble tradesmen’s origins unsurprisingly not reflected in the statues’ noble poise, patrician robes hardly suited to the tradesman stock of a factory owner. Dick could feel the warmth flooding out into the night, underfloor heating pipes kept warm by some great boiler in the basement of the mansion, tended by stokers and eating up an expensive supply of shire-mined coal. Such waste, such extravagance. The fuel they were using to heat that hall that would have kept Dick’s lodgings warm for a month.
    I should have a hallway like this. Well, let’s see them produce her ladyship. That’ll wipe the superior smile off their man’s face, suck some of the warmth out of Lord Chant’s comfortable life. Fat rich sod. Let’s see how he copes in a prison cell. It won’t be warm inside Bonegate Jail. Nobody waiting on him hand and foot, no summoning breakfast with a pull of a chord by his bedside.
    There was one thing that Dick Tull had to say about Lady Florence. She looked good for a dead woman. She certainly looked better than the image of her that he’d seen in their briefing. The daguerreotype hardly did justice to her long curled blonde hair, as elaborate as the gown of pure velvet that curved seductively around her arms and neck, her face as perfect and flawless as the statues she was passing.
    ‘An unexpected pleasure,’ she smiled as warmly as the heat of the air gushing out into the night. ‘Old Cutler tells me that our neighbours across the road have concerns about my welfare. They are dears, but it was quite a minor slip on the ice in my garden. Nothing apart from a slight mud stain on my dress and the loss of dignity secured from the fall.’ She stopped to indicate a long thin hound with yellow fur lounging around the top of her wide, sweeping stairs. ‘But Brutus does need his exercise, or he makes the most terrible mess in the parlour.’
    ‘You know that it’s my duty to take the dog outside, your ladyship,’ said the butler, in a hurt tone of voice, as if his personal honour had been offended. ‘Especially in this ugly weather.’
    ‘Then when would I take my exercise?’ said the woman. ‘I step from door to carriage and from carriage to door. My little darling keeps me company, and we exercise each other. Peace now, gentlemen, since you have taken the trouble to visit, I quite insist that you come inside out of the cold while old Cutler goes down the stairs to cook and fetches up a tray of tea and biscuits. You must warm up before you venture out once more to mind our safety. I certainly wouldn’t want to be bitten by any of those dreadful creatures with their monstrous appetite for blood.’
    Dick Tull didn’t need the heat of a mug to warm him, as he held onto the bubbling outrage he was feeling towards one William Beresford. The young officer had made a fool out of him with his tale of Lady Florence’s murder. When the board’s runner had stopped at their cab halt, Dick had needed to confirm Billy-boy’s story, and present it as his own as the senior agent on duty. After all, he hardly could have admitted that he had been snoring off the contents of his hip flask inside the hansom cab when he should have been